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• Rice beer made in Asia over thousands of years.
• Use a. oryzae and yeasts (natural or store bought, with their own ferments).
• Easy. Steam sweet glutionous rice, add rice yeast (it’s mold culture with local yeasts) and some yeast.
• Let sit for a week or two depending on the temperature, add water to the mixture until rice is covered, let it sit for a couple of weeks until desired flavor is achieved.
• Different cultures, different places, different people, different recipes. Sweet rice is optimized, but other work too.
• Eaten as dessert, drunk like wine, sipped or chugged.
• The ‘clear’ part is called ‘neegaar’ in Nepali, treated like wine, the ‘whitish’ part you get after squeezing alcohol out of rice at the end of the process is called chhyang, a little lighter, more flavorful, more textural. Interesteing.
• Can use the leftover rice output for cooking. Fed to cows in Nepal, and they become drunk!
• Many different ways to play around, can play with growth characteristics of the mold, as well as the yeasts.
• Can vary the content of the water added, or not add at all. Can mash fruits (peach, apples, etc) or veggies (eg. sweet potato, cooked) and let them co-ferment, providing flavor and body to the final outcome.
• My most popular ferment, everybody enjoys this. add sugar and airtight bottle to carbonate. don’t add yeast for ‘natural fruity’ aroma 2-3 weeks into initial fermentation.
• Can also ferment using ‘second water’ and even ‘third water’ in certain circumstances. how much the rice is cooked also controls the rounds of productive use for the rice. Many variables to toggle to influence the final product.
• Many different cultures, many different recipes, lots of possibility to play around and experiment.